Fighting Mad

By BILL PLASCHKE

Nov. 30, 2000 12 AM PT

LAS VEGAS — So, Fernando Vargas, tell us about your father.

“I don’t want anything to do with that maggot.”

Pardon?

“He left me at birth. I never had any direction growing up. I never had anybody tell me what to do. So I hurt kids. And I was happy about it.”

Oh.

“He’s like a fly now, buzzing around, trying to get what he can get.”

Hmmm.

“I tell him if he ever calls me or comes in front of me, he will see what a real man is. I will beat the . . . out of him.”

Can you tell us your father’s first name?

“Maggot.”

That sun setting on the Golden Boy is turning everything dark and cold and just the way the Southland’s potential newest boxing king likes it.

Meet Fernando Vargas. The Angry Boy.

The unbeaten Oxnard street kid faces world champion Felix Trinidad here Saturday in what is officially a battle for the unified junior-middleweight title.

But Los Angeles knows better.

Bigger and shinier than any belt is the Southland turf recently vacated by that singing fool Oscar De La Hoya. With an upset win, Vargas could own it all.

The love of the diverse neighborhoods that crowded Olvera Street last Sunday for a pep rally. The money from advertisers waiting for a new young face. Perhaps even the sort of emotional grip on Mexican-American communities that some say De La Hoya never had.

Vargas, 22, thinks this will happen because he is everything De La Hoya is not.

“People know I am a real person, not rehearsed,” he said Wednesday during a Mandalay Bay news conference that certainly proved his point. “I say what I feel. I feel what I say. I am a real Mexican person.”

Trinidad is considered by some to be the world’s best champion. Vargas is still one of the rawest.

Yet Trinidad has a habit of hitting the floor early, and if Vargas can somehow keep him down . . .

The kid knows that De La Hoya, whose boxing future has been clouded by lawsuits and love songs, began his downfall 14 months ago with a late-round retreat in his loss to Trinidad.

The kid understands how fitting it would be if he began his ascension by charging Trinidad in that very same time.

“You’re in this business to fight, you get paid a million dollars and you don’t want to fight?” he said. “I will fight.”

And if he returns to Los Angeles as a unified champion? Well, let’s just say nobody will mistake him for the other guy.

Beginning the minute he turns down Broadway in a vehicle with the EL FEROZ (The Ferocious) license plate.

That’s right, Vargas drove from Los Angeles to Las Vegas. His rig, a dark green combination SUV-limousine, is fully equipped with a hanging speed bag.

The differences between him and De La Hoya only begin there.

Those who like their boxers to also be entertainers will find the change unpleasant. Those who like their boxers to be boxers will not.

De La Hoya is attractive, well-dressed, eternally pleasant.

Vargas showed up Wednesday in dark baggy pants, dark baggy jacket and a scowl. His hair is buzzed, not gelled. His frown never moved.

“As a kid, I could not think when I was mad, and I hurt people,” he said. “A boxing ring is the only place I can think when I’m mad.”

De La Hoya, of Mexican descent but born in the Southland like Vargas, was so multicultural he angered many Mexican-Americans who thought he had forgotten his roots.

Vargas summoned a buddy Wednesday to serenade the room with what Vargas called “Mexican rap.”

Afterward, when the mostly English-speaking reporters looked puzzled, Vargas shrugged and said, “Don’t you guys know Spanish? We’re not the minority anymore. We’re the majority. You have to know Spanish.”

He later used Spanish in several answers and challenged the reporters to look up the words.

“The people in L.A., I come from them, I am them,” he said. “When I step in the ring, I’m proud of my culture, I’m proud to be a Mexican.”

De La Hoya has changed trainers as often as he changed mouthpieces.

Vargas has stuck with Eduardo Garcia since they met in an Oxnard boxing club when Vargas began fighting at age 10.

“People are always trying to take me away from him, people saying he can’t take me to the next level,” Vargas said. “Those people get [fired]. He is like a father to me.”

De La Hoya has said that he fights to gain approval from his father, who attends each bout.

Vargas could care less.

He said that, with his two children, he tries to make up for what he feels he lost.

“I try to be the best father in the world to them, whatever I think the best father in the world is,” he said.

Battling a current assault charge after an incident that allegedly began after he was caught in bed with a stripper by her spurned boyfriend might not fall under that category.

But Vargas says he is innocent. And that he is trying.

“After all I’ve been through, I don’t think anybody can mess with me,” he said. “Nobody can break me down.”

Not even De La Hoya? Maybe one day we’ll find out.

Although similar in weight and only five years apart in age, the two men have never fought because De La Hoya controlled the action and never wanted to include his younger rival.

This enraged Vargas, but he couldn’t do anything about it. Saturday night, everything could change.

With a win, Vargas and De La Hoya could be perfect for each other. Count Vargas in. From the sounds of it, he would like nothing better than to take a few swings at the man he could soon leave behind.

“I heard somewhere that De La Hoya wanted to teach me how to beat Trinidad,” the Angry Boy said with an angry laugh. “I thought, ‘You mean teach me how to lose?’ ”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: [email protected].

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Fight Facts

* Main event: Felix Trinidad (37-0, 30 knockouts) vs. Fernando Vargas (20-0, 18 knockouts) for WBA and IBF junior-middleweight titles.

* Card begins: 6 p.m. PST Saturday

* Where: Mandalay Bay Events Center, Las Vegas

* Television: TVKO pay per view

OTHER BOUTS

* IBF light-flyweight championship--Champion Ricardo “Finito” Lopez (48-0-1, 35 KOs) vs. Ratanapol Vorapin (38-5-1, 30 KOs).

* WBA middleweight championship--Two-time champion William Joppy (31-1-1, 23 KOs) vs. Guillermo Jones (26-2-1, 21 KOs).

* Women--Christy Martin (40-2-2, 30 KOs) vs. Sabrina Hall (10-1-1, 4 KOs).